Tracing the pulse of Black British music across memory, migration and modernity
14 April 2026
At V&A East’s inaugural exhibition, ‘The Music is Black: A British Story’, sound becomes both archive and witness. Curated by Jacqueline Springer, this exhibition spans more than a century, mapping the rhythms of Black British life through music, revealing a cultural lineage shaped by displacement, resistance and invention. From early 20th-century compositions to the charged frequencies of grime and drill, the exhibition positions Black music not as a genre, but as a living, evolving language.
Across more than 200 objects, visitors encounter an intimate constellation of stories. Instruments, garments, photographs and personal artefacts trace the routes through which diasporic memory travels and transforms. A piano, a Nintendo console, and a stage-worn outfit each become a vessel of sonic experimentation and cultural authorship. The exhibition includes artworks by Sonia Boyce, Olayinka Burney-Nicol, Sokari Douglas Camp CBE,
Denzil Forrester, Fowokan George Kelly, Tam Joseph, Vicky Lindo, Bill Brookes, and Zak Ové, along side specially commissioned new works by Frank Bowling and LR Vandy.
What emerges is a portrait of Britain refracted through Black creativity. Genres such as lovers rock, jungle and UK garage are framed not only as musical innovations, but as social responses to migration, urban life and collective imagination.
In foregrounding both the iconic and the overlooked, the exhibition insists on Black British music as foundational rather than peripheral, a force that continues to shape global culture and the ways we listen, remember and belong.
This exhibition is on view at V&A East Museum, on the East Bank in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, from 18 April 2026 onwards.
